this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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2024 has seen two mass layoffs at Microsoft, with 1900 staff laid off in January, before a further 650 Xbox employees were shown the door in September.

Regardless, Microsoft's shares are up and the company's market value is now higher than $3tn, as it works to capitalise on the rise of AI.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 hours ago

I think the author got confused, it's not despite off it's because of.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Trickle down economics - when the 1% tinkle on the remainder.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Trickle down was a rebrand.

It used to be called "Horse and Sparrow economics."

Idea being: The horses eat buckets of whole grains. And the sparrows pick their meal from the horseshit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 hours ago

Never heard that. Regardless, i love it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

Go Copilot!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

He's doing what the Board wants, stock price is up. If there was a worker advocate on the board, maybe things would be different.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

stock is regularly at a new all time high with $400++/share.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

In case you missed it, in our broken model of civilization a CEO's only responsibility is to increase value for shareholders. Not to clients, not to employees, not to the biosphere.

Market cap increased, job's done successfully.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

A) 1971, Economist Milton Friedman explicitly told the world the "only social responsibility" for businesses is to increase shareholder value. The Business Roundtable heartily endorsed this view, setting the stage for the next half century of villains to gleefully enrich themselves without compunction.

B) 2019, Business Roundtable reversed their 50 year position to include that businesses should be beholden to all Stakeholders, not just shareholders.

But of course the damage has been done, and continues onward. To compound this, the FED's open-purse monetary policy for 14 YEARS ushered in the worst inflation in 40 years, while wages have stagnated for 4 decades, kicking off around the time Baby Boomers were birthing the first Millennial children.

These are just some of the reasons Millennials lay the bulk of culpability at the feet of Baby Boomers, who of course respond with something like: "Well, I don't remember that."

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 hours ago

CEOs gonna CEO.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 15 hours ago

Because of layoffs, not despite them.

[–] [email protected] 86 points 18 hours ago (12 children)

When I entered the work force in 2005, it was with a company that had never had a layoff in its thirty-year history.

Then, in 2009, they had their first layoff, and I learned later our CEO had taken an 80% pay raise that year.

Taxes aren't theft. Literally firing people and taking their salaries is theft.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Also that CEO has an eminently punchable face.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 hours ago

tautological

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (2 children)

The entire point of AI as it stands right now is to allow more of those layoffs. Anyone telling otherwise is a liar.

Also I hate how currently, AI is used to remove the fun parts of creating things at a computer. Take coding for example, I think I can speak for many people when I say that the fun part of their job, is not the planning or the meetings, it's the actual coding and stumbling upon a hard problem to solve. Now with AI you the human will only keep the boring parts of the job!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Don't overestimate LLMs, it can't code and never will be. It can create templates convincingly enough and do boilerplate parts that are nonsense only sometimes, but those aren't the fun parts of the coding process anyway. In my experience, LLM isn't helping at all and I spend more time fixing it's nonsense than I would do if I don't use it at all, so I don't

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

As someone without a computer science background and who started learning Python for data science shortly before LLMs became mainstream, I gotta say it's been pretty useful for the learning process. I don't mean I just use it to write scripts for me but rather it can be a useful sorta of guide the way a scripted advisor mihht be in a game. Seems to me that one of the good sides of LLMs is that they can make technically dofficult fields more accessible as long as you understand its limits and know what it can and cant do._ i would never use it for any sort of subjective issue but I find it great for logical tasks. And this is not to say that's its perfect for that either but it has increased my efficiency for certain work tasks tremendously.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

As someone with degrees and decades of experience, I urge you not use it for that. It's a cleverly disguised randomness machine, it will give you incorrect information that will be indistinguishable from truth because "truth" is never the criteria that it can use, but be convincing is. It will seed those untruths into you and unlearning bad practices that you picked up at the beginning might take years and cost you a career. And since you're just starting, you have no idea how to pick up bullshit from truth as long as the final result seem to work, and that's the works way to hide the bullshit from you.
The field is already very accessible for everyone who wants to learn it, the amount of guides, examples, teaching courses, very useful youtube videos with thick Indian accent is already enormous, and most of them are at least trying to self-correct, while LLM actively doesn't, in fact it's trying to do the opposite.
Best case scenario you're learning inefficiently, worst case scenario you aren't learning at all

[–] [email protected] 2 points 43 minutes ago (1 children)

Thank you, I will take this into consideration. It sure is tempting to use LLMs but I will always trust experts in the field over LLMs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 32 minutes ago

Yeah, the scary thing about LLMs is that by their very nature they sound convincing and it's very easy to fall into a trap, we as humans are hardwired to misconstrue the ability to talk smoothly for intelligence, and when computer started to speak with complete sentences and hold the immediate context of a conversation, we immediately started to think that we have a thinking machine and started believing it.
The worst thing is, there are legit uses for all the machine learning stuff and LLMs in particular, so we can't just throw it all out of the window, we will have to collectively adapt to this very convincing randomness machine that is just here all the time

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago

Exactly how I am feeling. AI took the fun part away of cracking a problem and the satisfaction of solving it is now gone.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 17 hours ago

They should be paying 90% tax over 1 million.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Typical and most people in the US view CEO's as heroes. US income distribution is on the same level as fucking Russia.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 17 hours ago

As someone from fucking Russia, people with biggest income in your country are usually first businessmen, second - something else, while in Russia those would be cockroaches from MFA, PA and other thieves, plus a few oligarchs who at some point were among those cockroaches.

So it may not be as bad yet, but frankly yes, you are giving out vibes of going in the same direction.

[–] [email protected] 64 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

He made $12000 off each fired employee.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 23 hours ago

Per year. And lets not talk about his stock options and other benefits... Fucking disgusting.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

Thank god, all these employees lost their jobs so Satya Nadella can pad out their already insanely high salary.

We don't want Satya to starve like the rest us of plebs!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

This is the shit we need to be thinking about when we read about a black person getting shot by a cop for stealing a loaf of bread, if you ask me.

[–] [email protected] 174 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 12 points 19 hours ago

Pretty standard issue corporate psychopath.

[–] [email protected] 75 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Headline confused "despite" and "due to"

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[–] [email protected] 96 points 1 day ago (6 children)

That’s roughly 30k for every employee laid off

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

79,000,000 / 2,550 = 30,980

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

The increase is only 30 mill

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Gotcha, sounds like we’re measuring two different things then

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah. He was already making 49, I was looking at how much of the redistribution went to him, not much, but I imagine it'll go to stock buybacks or AI electricity

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

Yeah maybe to their three mile island project. What a weird sentence. Just a few years off from our Weyland Yutani future

[–] [email protected] 7 points 15 hours ago

So the CEO gets less than half their salary for the year?

Sounds like a great deal for the company. Until, you know, the whole thing collapses because they laid off the workers who kept the whole thing running

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago

“Look timmy, it’s a man made entirely of bullshit”

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 day ago (6 children)

The board doesn’t care about the number of people employed. They care about the current profitability and future profitability.

Of course that’s their job; to look after shareholder interests. And the money would move to a better investment if they didn’t.

It’s the whole system you need to change, if you seek change, not moan about an individual CEO.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

I don't see how paying him so much is actually increasing dividends though.

Pay him half as much or find someone else who will do it for half as much

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